What should you eat if you're a runner?

Ah the old dreaded question, that can be answered in a thousand ways! :) It is easy to look at what the top runners in the world are eating and try to emulate that but you should ask yourself, are you from Kenya? Are you an elite runner? Do you train 6 hours per day?

For most of us, the answer will be no to all of these questions. Kenyan runners that run professionally and even semi-professionally train upwards of 140 miles per week and spend a lot of energy training so they can get by eating a lot of refined sugar, often drinking soda after training. If you do the same but only train twice or thrice a week, you will most likely be overweight even though you are exercising. Even western elites eat a lot of carbohydrates because they burn them off during their training.

My advice is to shift your diet a bit and eat more fats and proteins than carbs. You will also need to eat a lot of fiber. If you eat a lot of carbs, you will constantly be hungry and will need to eat every couple of hours or be hungry. By eating fats (healthy fats, that is), you will teach your body to use fat as fuel and you will have a toned body in no time. For most people it will take 4 to 6 months, for others, it might take a bit longer.

So stop eating like a Kenyan elite because you are not Kenyan and not elite! :)

What to do if you have little time to train?

A lot has been said lately about training slow to run fast but what if you can only train twice a week for one hour, should you run slow and expect to race fast?

First of the bat, it will be hard to race fast and/or to your potential if all the time you have to train is 2 hours per week but as life sets in, it is a reality for a lot of people that running is secondary to family and work obligations, more like a hobby. So should you still train slowly and expect to be able to crank up the pace on race day if all you do is run slow for 2 hours per week? My quick answer is a resounding 'No!'

If all you have is 2 hours per week, I would suggest separating your run time into 4 segments and running 4 times a week with 3 easy slow runs at 180-age heart rate or less for 30 minutes each and one faster run which could be a threshold or interval workout. You won't get enough stimulus to your body to help you run at a fast clip if all you do is run slow for 4 runs of 30 min or 2 hours total. So, instead do one fast run per week or two if you can. Make sure you warm-up for at least 10 min and then pick-up the pace. So a 30 min progression run can work too. 10 min easy running then every 2 min go faster and faster. If you don't have time to warm-down, a walk back to your office or house is also fine.

If you don't know what a threshold or interval run is, please look at my other posts. In short, a threshold run is a run where you will run at a pace you can hold for an hour in a race. Certain watches like the new Garmin ones will even help you by showing you the right HR or pace to reach in order to run at your threshold pace.

Intervals should be repetitions of a certain distance such as 400 meter repeats or 800 or 1km or 1 mile. If you have little time to train, I would also suggest jogging the rest period instead of standing still, which will also be beneficial for your overall fitness.